Cracking Open
by Hinn-Raven
Summary: Stephanie Brown, alone in Wayne Manor, ends up finding a Bruce who hasn't slept in three days. The two of them, as it turns out, have a lot of unresolved things to discuss.


Wayne Manor is, well, frankly, it's pretty creepy, especially when it's as empty as it is.

Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler, can't help but feel like an intruder in the space, even though she's got everything but a notarized letter from Alfred saying it's perfectly fine if she crashes in Cass's bed for the night.

A concussion isn't really that big of a deal, but with her mom doing another stint in rehab (hopefully, one that _lasts _this time), Alfred had put his foot down about Steph driving herself home on her motorcycle.

And with no one else to drive her home, it was eventually settled that Steph could stay in the "yellow guest room in the north wing," which Steph had eventually managed to locate, with the help of Tim's text messages.

Normally, Steph would have just crashed in Cass's room, but Cass was in Europe right now, and the room felt… sad, without Cass there.

So, instead, she's staying in the Yellow Guest Room, which, apparently, is named so for the yellow curtains, because the walls were actually wallpapered with navy and white stripes.

She has questions about rich people and their decorating decisions.

So Steph, still not cleared to drive, wakes up the morning after her concussion, and wanders down to the kitchen, where she finds a neatly penned note from Alfred saying he's gone into Gotham proper to run errands.

Steph makes herself a cup of coffee using Bruce's fancy machine, grabs an apple, and sets out in search of the man himself.

It's only when she's descending down the steps to the Batcave that Steph stops and admits to herself that Bruce, being a billionaire who runs a company, probably is at work or something, instead of living life like a seventeen-year-old vigilante who's only not in foster care because Social Services wrote her off years ago.

(She thinks Babs might help with that, but she's never dared to ask. She tries not to talk much about… any of it, really. Not with any of them. Her mom is _great_, really, it's not her fault that she's _sick_, even if it means that Steph had to grow up too much, too fast.)

She nearly talks herself back up the stairs, before eventually deciding that, even if Bruce Wayne isn't present, she's not above snooping around the Batcave when no one's around.

So she finally goes all the way down the stairs, into the Cave, and finds Bruce.

She hasn't seen much of Bruce, lately. He's been on the trail of some big case, which Tim has been keeping Steph out of. To be fair, she _is _still getting her feet under her, after the whole… Africa thing, but…

Bruce has _definitely _been avoiding her, since she's gotten back. She's heard, from Tim, that he'd known she was alive, but the way things have been… she hasn't really had a chance to talk to him.

She kind of resents it, that Bruce had known that she was alive, the whole time, and never come to talk to her. All that time that she had been lying in a bed, barely able to move, barely even able to _speak_, trying to convince Leslie to let her up, to call her mom, to _anything_, but Leslie keeping her there, because any movement could have been her last, any spike in her heart rate could have shattered the fragile equilibrium that her body had come to…

Instead, she had been left in a drugged stupor for months on end, and when she could move again, she was thin and pale, her hair a ragged mess and her body a mess of scars. Her muscles were so atrophied that she couldn't walk, and her voice croaked when she spoke.

So she had stayed, trying to recover, because she couldn't… she _couldn't _face them all like that, like a walking, living corpse, never mind that she basically _was _one. They were already going to hate her, for those months, and she had just… kept herself away, a while longer.

But Bruce had _known_, and if he had just… talked to her, she would have come back sooner, because she wouldn't have had to worry about the pity in his eyes when he saw her struggling with her crutches, with physical therapy, with trying to get her hands to do what she wanted them to, because it was already _there_.

She spins the stem of her apple in her hand as she moves down the stairs. Bruce doesn't look up at her.

"Hey boss-man," she says, perching on the console of the computer. "How's it going?"

He lets out the barest grunt of acknowledgement. Steph pauses, unsure, but… Bruce has said, in the past, that he doesn't _mind _when she chatters, and she's so nervous, being here, in his presence, alone with him for the first time since those fuzzy memories of the hospital, that she decides to just let her mouth run.

"Do you think Cass is having fun in Europe? I know she's fine, she's _Cass_, she's always fine, well, okay, except when she's not, but she'll pretend she is anyways. But I hope she's having _fun_, you know? She's not great at that part of things. Wonder where she gets that from, huh?"

Bruce lets out another grunt and keeps working at his computer.

She looks over her shoulder, at the computer screen. The mug shot of a man is shown, along with some crime scene photos, which Bruce is analyzing.

"He looks like a _jerk_," Steph opines. "Look at him, _no one_ should have that kind of mustache. It's like a hipster-stache, but _eviler_."

Bruce lets out a noise that is _almost _a laugh.

"Ha! You agree! I knew you thought I was funny!" She gets off the console and reads over Bruce's shoulder. Engrossed, she's quiet for a while, before she notices the clock in the corner, the one that Babs installed to try to guilt Bruce and Tim into taking breaks.

"You should sleep, Bruce," she tells him. "You're burning the daylight oil."

"It's important," Bruce says, his teeth gritted.

"They're all important to you." _Except, apparently, me_. "But you're no good to anyone like this." She forces a laugh.

"I'm no good to anyone asleep," Bruce grumbles.

Steph sighs loudly. "Man, I'm really no good at the getting you to listen to me thing. No wonder you fired me as Robin."

The words slip out, careless, because hey, why not? She is what she is.

"That's not true," Bruce says, his voice ragged. He's not even _looking _at her, and somehow, that just makes it worse.

Steph looks away from him, trying to tamp down on the fury that is bubbling in her chest, threatening to boil over. "Go to bed, Bruce."

"I _need _to do this," he repeats, and Steph groans.

"You're not _alone_!" She yells. "You don't have to do this alone!"

"Go away," he grits out. His eyes are focused on the screen, refusing to even give her the acknowledgement of a sidelong glance.

"Not until you _look at me_!" Steph demands, because her patience is at its limits.

"You're not real," he says. "Now go away."

Steph freezes.

"What?"

"You're not her." He says, muttering to himself. He presses a hand over his eyes. "Stephanie Brown died nine months ago, and you're not her. You're never her."

"I—" Steph, for once, is lost for words. He's… he thinks she's… what, a ghost? A hallucination? _Has he hallucinated her before this? _"Bruce, I'm _real_." She tries to reach for him, but he jerks away.

He finally turns to look at her, and his eyes are glassy—with exhaustion or tears, she's not sure, but either way, she's _terrified_.

"She's dead," Bruce says. "She's dead."

"But—but you _knew _I was alive!" She whispers. "That's why—that's why there's no memorial!"

"It's not finished," he says, and she dashes away, for the medical kit that Alfred keeps nearby, because she's starting to think that he's _drugged_. "I'm—I want it to be perfect. It's—I need it to be perfect. Jason's keeps getting damaged. I don't want—not that again."

"Bruce, you're talking nonsense," Steph says, because he was _Batman_. Of _course _he'd known. He just hadn't cared. He's _never _cared about Steph, why should this be any different? She's not one of his kids, not one of his charges or wards, even. She's not Robin or Batgirl, even if she has a few stolen memories, precious moments that were, all along, a game to lure Tim back.

She's _nothing _to Bruce Wayne, and that's the way it is. She's given up on anything more than tolerance.

The drug testing kit needs a urine sample, which, _ew_. Don't they have anything for blood tests? She runs to the next bench, near the machines that they use to develop Joker Gas antidotes.

When she risks another look over to Bruce, he's moved away from the computer, towards Jason's case.

"I'm sorry," he's telling the case. "You both deserve so much better."

"Don't know how to tell you this, B, but Jason's alive, and I was never dead," Steph yells, and _fuck_, Alfred's re-arranged the place since she was Robin. Where's a syringe?

She's _never _seen Batman like this, and it's filling her with a strange, creeping sort of terror. It's different than Fear Gas, different than looking the Black Mask in the eye and knowing she's going to die, different than waking up with her head shaved and none of her limbs moving right. It's… it's fundamentally _wrong_.

He's _Batman_.

She doesn't understand what's going on here.

That's when she spots the package of stimulants.

"Bruce," she calls. "How long has it been since you've slept?" Oh that is _way _too few patches, and now that she knows to look for it, there's at least half a dozen dirty coffee cups scattered throughout the cave.

_Not good_.

"Three days," he says, absently.

"_Bruce_!"

"I need to find him," Bruce says. "Stephanie, I _need _to find him."

"You're overdosing on stimulants and caffeine and your own ego! Go the fuck to _sleep_!"

He turns his back on her, and she grits her teeth.

Sleep deprivation and _Batman_. What a goddamn combination.

Oh, and apparently, she's a fucking _hallucination_. With a concussion.

She starts looking for a sedative, because she might not know too much about medicine, but she _does _know that if you're sleep deprived enough to hallucinate, the best solution is probably to actually _sleep_.

"I know I failed you," Bruce says, but this time, he's not looking at her, but at a corner, and oh, he's _actually _hallucinating now. "I should have found you, I should have been faster—"

And oh, isn't that everything that Steph's ever wanted to hear, but she really can't focus on that right now.

"What part of _you need to sleep _aren't you getting!" She yells. "I fucked up, okay! I know I did."

He turns towards her, mouth slightly open. "Stephanie—"

"I screwed up, and I got Orpheus killed, I got _so many people killed_, just because I was stupid and insecure and of _course _you wouldn't have found me, you were busy cleaning up after my mistakes, and then I—"

Bruce blinks.

"Stephanie?"

"People _died _because of me, and I _know _I can't make up for that, I know I'm not a hero but—"

"No."

She looks up at him, startled, and there's a clarity in his eyes that hadn't been there moments ago.

"You were trying to help," he says, and she realizes, with a jerk, that he's _seeing _her. "You were only… trying to help. And I pushed you away."

She swallows, her eyes itching with tears that she's not willing to let loose just yet. "Bruce. I'm alive. You know that, right?"

He nods.

"Oh! Good. Uh, you should. Probably go to sleep."

"The case—"

"I'll look at it. Or Tim will. Or Babs will. You're not alone, Bruce. Not like—" She cuts herself off.

"Not like you," he finishes, for her, and she feels her cheeks turn scarlet.

"I—"

Suddenly, he frowns. "You have a concussion."

"It's only a _little _one!" Steph replies, immediately on the defensive.

"You should rest too."

Steph hesitates. "If I go to bed, will you?"

"Promise," he says, a slight quirk to his mouth.

She forces him to pink-swear, just because she can, and the two of them go up the stairs together, to get some sleep.

* * *

**_epilogue _**

She's sitting at the kitchen table that night, nursing a cup of hot cocoa, when a manila folder is placed under her face.

She looks up, startled, to see Bruce, who looks infinitely better rested, and less on the edge.

"What's this?"

"I know I said some things, down in the Cave," Bruce says. "And… I know that you've come to some conclusions."

Steph flips open the folder, and gasps.

Different blueprints are inside. Marble and glass and metal, statues and plaques and cases, in purple, red, yellow, and green.

And Bruce's handwriting in the corner of all of them, critiquing each design.

"I never finished it," he says. "I kept putting it off… because if it went up, it felt like it would be admitting that you were really gone."

Steph looks up at him. "But—I thought you knew?"

"I didn't," he says. "I told Tim I did. I don't know why."

She swallows down the tears that have been building up since the Cave, and she finally gives in to the urge that she's been suppressing since she was fifteen and throws her arms around him in a tight hug.

"It's good to have you back, Stephanie," he says, and he hugs her back.

Steph lets herself start to cry.


End file.
